Attempting To Reach Eclipse/COTA

[oldironnow]

The neighbor’s darkside setup on his Goldwing





Whata screamer ! So light ! So quick ! Dynamite brakes ! Effortless handling !



Very Sportsterish. A little wide at the pegs. Needs tebound dampening, but not awful suspension. Light clutch pull.
Shakes with soul. Nice seat. Needs pipes so desperately.



Loaded to go.

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[oldironnow]

Fatfatboy wrote

I’m still jealous.

It was a great race. Turn 1 had shoulder to shoulder and paint trading that threw Vinales way in 11 from first. I knew he’d pass some of the riders but not all of them.  
Good job on him.
I was really hoping for Marquez to land top step was about knocked into the chip dip when he lost it in the turn.
Aucosta has great last second braking and I think he can outbreak all the Ducati’s.
Lots of good maneuvers by so many of the top riders.
This guys are fantastic.

Very cool you got to meet up with an old friend and catch up. Good memories are so much a part of us and who whe are.
I hope your ride home is filled with sunshine and smooth tarmac.

That was a great Austin race.
Road all day.
Incredible wind starting in El Paso.
Made it to Deming, NM, but Ratana’s rear tire is not going to make it home.
The heat today with that headwind really chewed on it.

[motogrady]

Great review guy.  Thanks so much.

The Dark Side.

That was one of the biggest and longest running threads back on the old CW forums😄

[oldironnow]

IMG_0083.mov

[oldironnow]

motogrady wrote

Great review guy.  Thanks so much.

The Dark Side.

That was one of the biggest and longest running threads back on the old CW forums😄

Welcome !

The Darksider was even super reticent to bring it up.
“ I don’t know how y’all feel ‘bout it cause some people actually want to fight me ‘bout it.”

Those days… what a firestorm.

He couldn’t explain it, but he said he was also darkside on the front tire, but that appeared to be a normal Bridgestone that he said was mounted backwards. So maybe it was a larger rear tire flipped around to protect the carcass seam.


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[hacksaw]

And I still say car tires aren’t for motorcycles.
Even on barges like gold wings.
Cheap bastards that won’t even support the industry but claim to be moto race fans? Total
BS!
And these same types are the first to get in a huff over a chopper with Firestone’s. Fools!

[hacksaw]

I do like these bikes. Yes as somebody said , Sportsterish. And since they don’t sell new sportsters anymore , one never knows .

This particular bike though , flat paint not only sucks but they don’t paint the rear fender never mind the side covers
The Special is the one to get  .

At one time there was a dealer near me.
This was about the time this  EV7 came out .
I checked them out and considered it. But I didn’t want to jump on a first year model . Do I waited to see . But the dealer dropped Guzzi . And then Guzzi kept upgrading these bikes every year . Meaning I wanted to wait for the latest edition .
The problem now Is one Ct dealer at least an hour away . Then sgain so are the BMW dealers . But BMW has a great pick up and delivery deal.
The MG place is a small shop. Which is cool 😎!!! But it’s a little out of the way. I would love to support the guy .
Oh well.

[oldironnow]

Deming, NM
Messed around trying to find a tire in a town with two dead motorcycle shops.
Gave up.
Raging sandstorm continued, with no good outdoor camping options.
Rented a room. (Quality, by the highway)
Damn good sleep.
Up at 05:30, refreshed.
The morning breakfast help named Ruby said she knows of a place in town that sells and mounts M/C tires.
Bingo.
Jet over there.
Nope. Stopped that five years ago.
They say go see Ramos at his junky tow shop - he’s your man.
When I get there, his junk is there, but no man.
I call the number from his sign, and my phone informs me he’s the same guy I called last night on a tip from the O’Reilly counterman. He did not call back last night, and after saying he’d be right over, I leave when he doesn’t show in 45 minutes.
Bummed about wasting the cold hours of the day.
But I did play with his broken crap, so there’s that.

[hacksaw]

You weren’t aware that you were taking this trip on a tire that was close to needing replacement?

[oldironnow]

hacksaw wrote

You weren’t aware that you were taking this trip on a tire that was close to needing replacement?

I was aware of the state of the year-old Metzelers.

You may not believe me, but I ritualistically check the rear, rear brake, rear brake light, front brake feel, and headlight before i mount before each start.
It's a leftover habit from my work pre-trips.

Reference the first page of this thread.
I was intending to drive (ugh) to Texas in a Tacoma, but it failed me in the last hour before leaving. I threw what I could fit of my gear onto the bike and left on the edge of a hail storm.

The rear was showing a touch of center-flatenning before i left - but plenty of meat was left. Wear was fine in the cold, but once out of the mountains and down into the heat of Texas pounding along at 90.. it just started to file away. It's over a thousand miles from El Paso to Austin and back.
And the return leg, from Austin to El Paso was all against an incredible headwind. 80 plus 40 mph headwind. That was like 120mph pressure at the rear... for hours on end.  By the time I got to Van Horn, the rear was starting to wear like a like tire - fine rolls of rubber peeling off and sticking to the carcass.

THEN , that dust storm descended on El Paso, and Ratana and I rode straight into those 55mph gusts until Deming, NM.

The wear essentially came on in a full day.

[oldironnow]

Waiting for Ramon at his shop in Deming.

[oldironnow]

[oldironnow]

[oldironnow]

[oldironnow]

So Deming gets left behind.
And I-10 envelopes Ratana and I again.
The plan is to troll at 65 and not run 85.
One has to ride the mirror to be defenive and not get squashed, to hover along the right of the slow lane and signal a right turn when someone approaches from the rear.
People get it.
eventually I pull up to the rear of a Ruan rental semi that's running at 65 and follow it politely in mirror-view until Lordsburg, NM where we both pull off for fuel. But I also check the rear tire.
I check it every hour across NM and AZ, which makes the day much easier. Less battered by the wind, the stops are quicker.
In what seems like no time, I'm on the west edge of Phoenix - 350 miles done at 4:30. At the last Cycle Gear until Indio, CA, I chill out for 90 minutes trying to figure out whether to get the one tire they stock that fits my bike (Dunlop GPR300) or just cross the Mojave at night.
I finally decide to just ride it home, as if I was just beginning to ride again, when I would take everything to bald and even scavenge the cast-off tires from behind the Honda shop on 41st in Capitola.
There's a Cycle Gear in Lancaster and also Bakersfield, and after that one, it's only 250-odd miles home.
Let's do this.

[oldironnow]

At Cycle Gear in Goodyear, AZ

[oldironnow]

Again with the trucks and 65 and climbing away from Phoenix. It's a long up-hill grind in the dark to somewhere around Tonopah, AZ.
Quarzsite offers a shower and a cup of INTENSE coffee and an endless conversation with a desert rat that started with 'are you going to the biker rally?' to milking cows to army life to working on the SR-71 to school bus living to many wives to living in Canada to discovering his affinity for hot-spring living to working in Detroit to ....he's 76 - neat trimmed pure white hair and beard and skin like a hot dog left all day on the rollers not three feet from us in the Pilot truck stop.

The INTENSE coffee and truck stop shower revive my soul. Instead of throwing out the cot somewhere around the area where feral-camping is allowed, I convince myself I can go all the way home at night AND get an Ironbutt 1000 certification.

80 miles later I realize I'm dense, and need sleep, and find out Chuckwalla Raceway is closed, so I have to keep moving. The next off-ramp is too weird and too exposed. I get an hour on the cot, but's it's cold and terribly loud.



I move west again to Chiriaco Summit and bed down behind a K-Rail wall for two hours right in the trucks in a protected nook. Their idling engines feel like home.
Discomfort grabs me by the shirt and shakes me - you want sleep! You want your bed! You are hungry for a real meal! You don't want to get caught in L.A.'s inbound rush hour traffic !
So I get up and go.
Down off the intermountain west and into Palm Springs.

[oldironnow]

I miss the stop sign at the bottom of the off ramp, pulling out in front of a speeding car that saves me by hammering the brakes and laying on the horn. The mirrors are full of headlights. Miracle.
Another truck stop. More bad coffee and food. Another gray hair asks which biker thing I'm going to.
"Not. Was. Going home."
I ask him what's he doing out here with two cups of coffee the size of Coleman stove propane cylinders.
"Going to Talladega."
I tell him that's good living while I'm looking over the rear - wearing but very slowly. Slightly out of round, now. He wants to know what I'm doing, so I tell him the story, and my conclusion that I can skip Indio's Cycle Gear and keep going.
"Still got tire... Good enough for a splash-and-go!" to which he laughs.

The sun comes up while riding through the San Grogonio Pass. Shaking with cold. It feels like ocean-cold morning air.




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[oldironnow]

More coffee in Highland.
The counter women haven't been charging me for coffee since New Mexico.
It can't all be an old batch.
I must look like hell.

I-10 to 210, to 215, to 138. Keep going. The road finally starts doing something other the running straight.

The tire holds, and Lancaster Cycle Gear does not get Ratana's patronage. But in Rosamond, CA, the engine makes a clatter, and I check the oil. It's down. Still a touch in the sight glass, but definitely lower, And the trip has surpassed the change interval.

O'Reilly has a generic quart of motorcycle oil, so that goes in, and it sounds better, so we take off, passing the entrance to Willow Springs Raceway. We've been on two-lane since Cajon Junction. This feels fine, like the machine could do this all day. Cutting through the back-country on old gray pocked roads that once had meaning and then lost it. The way to Tehachapi, settled by Desert Rats, and their junk, all widely spaced amongst the endless scruffy scrub. A real home and a garage. Devastated mobile homes, weathering, torn open, deconstructing. a mystery warehouse slab with dock bumpers aaaalll around, but no structure on top left at all.

But there's a new meaning for this road - power. Wind and solar need installation and service. Windmills are coming over the hill from Tehachapi, and solar PV is off to the east; their nourishing trucks are on these roads and are easy to get around.


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[hacksaw]

Ya know What? You are lucky to be alive .
Well I guess you can’t figure 1 year old  metzler would take a shit on you  I will never buy metzler ever again .
But really, for a guy whom does all the pre ride safety checking , you wouldn’t buy the one tire CG had in stock that may have saved your life?
Don’t you have a family ? Anyone that cares about u?
Death wish or not , i am personally grateful you made it home. I guess I just got old. Plenty of insane situations I have put myself in . But I was so much older then, I am younger than that now. Lol.
And I am not that much of a masochist .